New Limerick IT campus bringing jobs to engineering hub

A new €3.5m campus development at Limerick IT that will focus on the teaching of precision engineering will create 100 full-time positions when it opens next year.

Limerick IT (LIT) today (1 December) confirmed that the Board of the Higher Education Authority (HEA) has approved the institute’s proposed purchase of a new site at Coonagh Cross to build the campus.

LIT says that 134 jobs will be created during the construction phase, while 100 full-time positions will be created when the campus has its first intake of students next year.

With the total development expected to take a total of three years, the campus is expected to bolster the university’s focus on precision engineering, which will gear students towards careers in mechanical and automobile engineering and aircraft maintenance, as well as automated production processes in the pharma and medtech sectors.

Among the facilities expected to be there are what will be called the National Precision Engineering Hub, which will provide services to the manufacturing sector such as employee training, testing facilities and applied research, with assistance from the Precision Turn Manufacturing Association (PTMA).

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Once fully completed, the centre is expected to be able to cater for 550 students by the time it opens in 2018, with the possibility that it could be expanded upon again and doubled by 2030.

The opening of this centre marks the third major development as part of the university’s Campus 2030 plan, which saw it open its Sportslab facility at its Tipperary campus earlier this year, followed by the International Fashion Incubator Limerick (IFIL) launched earlier this month.

President of LIT, Dr Maria Hinfelaar, said of the announcement: “This is a game-changing moment for LIT and for higher education in the mid-west. This is a critical capital investment made by the State which ensures that LIT will be a key catalyst helping Limerick and the wider mid-west region to continue attracting further high-value technology jobs.”

As an award-winning editor for Consumer Magazine of the Year 2013, Colm joined Siliconrepublic.com in January 2014 as a journalist covering AI, IoT, science and anything that will get us to Mars quicker.

When not trying to get his hands on the latest gaming release, he can be found lost in a sea of Wikipedia articles on obscure historic battles and countries that don’t exist anymore or watching classic Simpsons episodes far too many times to count.

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